When Harold Brooks took his family to a performance of “Peter and the Wolf” in Chicago years ago, his wife picked up a line that embodied her husband’s approach to life.
“He’s no ordinary wolf, he’s got a plan,” Virginia Brooks would say.
Whether it was selling kitchenware to farmers’ wives Downstate to pay his way through college, moving his family to Hinsdale when it was still surrounded by farmland, or negotiating with union leaders as a vice president for Armour & Co., Mr. Brooks lived a focused life, said his son, David.
“He had a plan for his life and he executed his plan,” his son said.
Mr. Brooks, 96, died Friday, May 17, of pneumonia in ManorCare of Hinsdale.
While growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Mr. Brooks got his first job at 12: delivering buttons by bicycle to neighborhood seamstresses.
Years later, in 1927, he graduated from the University of Chicago School of Business. After working at an advertising agency, he went to work in the stockyards for Armour & Co. He worked for the meatpacking company for 38 years before retiring in 1970 as corporate vice president for personnel, labor relations and advertising.
He married Virginia in 1936 and moved his family to Hinsdale in 1950.
While at the company during World War II, Mr. Brooks devised a plan that helped increase the sale of war bonds to employees, his son said. Mr. Brooks suggested the employer deduct the money from employees’ paychecks instead of the company buying the bonds and then collecting from workers, which had been the norm.
The U.S. Treasury sent a representative from Washington, D.C., to investigate the idea, David Brooks said. Later the government would use the procedure to collect income and Social Security taxes.
Mr. Brooks received a plaque from the federal government at his retirement for his contribution, a recognition that made him feel both proud and a little squeamish, his son said.
“It was sort of a joke that he backhandedly helped the Treasury collect taxes,” his son said.
Mr. Brooks, who was an active volunteer, served on the board of the Chicago Area Council of the Boy Scouts of America and was vice president of health, education and welfare for the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry.
“When he went into something, he was very seldom a soldier,” David Brooks said. “He was a general.”
In addition to his wife and son, Mr. Brooks also is survived by a daughter, Joan Maxwell; six grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Services have been held.
